


If It'll Lead You Home

by stevergrsno (noxlunate)



Series: Happy Steve Bingo Fills [22]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Returns, Dogs, Fluff, Happy Steve Bingo, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-25 17:30:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16665130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noxlunate/pseuds/stevergrsno
Summary: “I’ll- I’ll go get you some dry clothes and some towels so that you can get warm. Maybe some blankets too…” Steve says after too long standing in his living room, backing up slowly towards his room, hesitant to take his eyes off of Bucky for as long as it will take to gather supplies.Bucky shakes his head firmly and thrusts the dog out towards Steve again, “No. Him first.” Bucky says, words still slow, but hard and insistent.“Okay, okay pal, we’ll take care of him first,”In which Bucky Barnes shows up on Steve's doorstep with a dog.





	If It'll Lead You Home

**Author's Note:**

> Oops this is soft. For the "puppies" square on my Happy Steve Bingo card.

Less than a month after Steve’s out of the hospital and settled into his apartment after the destruction of SHIELD Bucky Barnes shows up on Steve’s doorstep. He’s soaking wet, hair dripping in a curtain around his face as he stands in the pouring rain, a threadbare hoodie sopping and sticking to him.

“I need… help.” Bucky’s voice comes out hoarse, words measured and rough.

Steve doesn’t even have to think twice about his answer.

“Of course. Anything you need Buck, _anything.”_ Steve says, feeling desperate with it, with his urge to do whatever it is Bucky needs, “What do you need?”

“I found this.” Bucky thrusts something towards Steve, and Steve finally notices the bundle of _something_ Bucky’s been carrying. It’s a _puppy,_ just as soaked as Bucky is and shivering in the cold. And _hell,_ now that Steve takes a moment to get over his surprise he can see that _Bucky_ is shivering. It’s barely noticeable, just the finest of tremors, but it’s still there.

Steve steps backward, opening the door wider. “Can you come inside? The both of you can warm up and we can figure out whatever your new friend needs.” He knows he sounds pleading, knows he’s probably coming on too strong, but he’s desperate to get Bucky inside so that he can convince him to _not leave_ again.

Bucky seems to contemplate it, eyes darting past Steve into his home, both ways down the street, and then finally settling on Steve. After a long moment in which Steve thinks he’s going to say no he gives a jerky nod and steps into Steve’s apartment, holding the wet ball of fluff a little closer.

“I’ll- I’ll go get you some dry clothes and some towels so that you can get warm. Maybe some blankets too…” Steve says after too long standing in his living room, backing up slowly towards his room, hesitant to take his eyes off of Bucky for as long as it will take to gather supplies.

Bucky shakes his head firmly and thrusts the dog out towards Steve again, “No. Him first.” Bucky says, words still slow, but hard and insistent.

“Okay, okay pal, we’ll take care of him first,” Steve says, hands raised in surrender, “Just let me go get some towels for him, okay?”

He waits for Bucky to give a short, jerky nod and then disappears into his bathroom.

 

Steve takes a moment to freak out with his head in his linen closet.

“Okay Rogers, you can do this,” He tells himself, fisting his hands into a towel so hard he nearly rips it, “This is no big deal. It’s just Bucky. Bucky who might not know he is, but hey at least he didn’t ask who the hell Bucky is, so _maybe._ You can do this. _You can do this.”_

He snatches every towel he has out of his towel and carries them into the living room, dumping them onto his couch. Bucky’s still standing there in his living room, the dog held carefully in his right hand and the left one tucked close into his side.

“Hey pal, can I see your friend there so I can dry them off?” Steve asks, picking up one of the fluffiest towels he has, “Or you can do it?” He offers the towel to Bucky, but after a brief moments consideration Bucky is thrusting the dog at Steve.

The puppy is a squirming, shivering mess but Steve does his best to keep a good handle on him, wrapping him up in a towel and rubbing at his fur briskly. He does his best to keep his touch gentle, keenly aware of how big his hands are compared to the little ball of shivering fluff.

When he’s done and the puppy is as dry as he can get with just towel drying, Bucky swoops in and scoops him up from Steve’s hands, tucking the ball of fluff back in close to him.

“How- I mean- I don’t know how much you remember,” Steve says honestly, when the silence has overtaken once more, “I was given… a _file._ On you. On what they did to you. And I know that they- They wiped you, wiped your memories.” It’s hard to get the words out properly, to not fall into the state of rage he’s been in since he poured over the file. It feels important though, to face this head on.

“A weapon doesn’t need a past,” Bucky says, seemingly unbothered as he scratches at the dog’s ears, seeming a little more sure of everything now that the puppy is dry and his shivering starting to subside.

“You’re not _a weapon,”_ Steve says, his arms crossing over his chest and a scowl twisting up his face before he can think better of it.

“I _was.”_

“You’re _not._ Jesus Christ Buck, just because they made you-”

“I _was,”_ Bucky interrupts before Steve can get on a tangent, “But now… Maybe not? A weapon doesn’t have a dog either.” And to Steve, that sounds like Bucky thinks that’s _something._ A weapon doesn’t have a dog, and it doesn’t have a past, and if Bucky has both of those then he can’t _possibly_ be a weapon.

Steve tries to remind himself that that’s probably wishful thinking on his part, but _god,_ he hopes it isn’t.

“How much do you remember?” He asks before he can stop himself, because he has to _know._

Bucky’s quiet for a moment, and Steve’s starting to get used to these long pauses. He’d never thought he could have quite so much patience until he was faced with this version of Bucky, one whose words seem carefully thought over, carefully weighed and measured before he lets them out.

“Enough,” Bucky says, flesh and blood fingers digging into the fur at the back of the dog’s neck, “I’m not- I’m not who you remember though, Steve, not really.”

And it’s so fucking _familiar,_ so much like Bucky in a tent in the middle of Europe, his voice soft in Steve’s ear as he told Steve ‘They changed me in there Stevie. I’m not the _same,_ I can feel it,’ that Steve can’t help but feel a surge of affection.

“I’d think not. People tend to change after seventy years, Buck.” Steve says, light and easy, letting himself get caught up in the bubble of warmth that seems to be settling into his chest and trying to lift him up like a balloon.

It must show because Bucky’s eyes narrow, “You’re not taking this seriously.” And _god,_ he sounds like he used to, accusing and too warm to be properly chiding and Steve isn’t even all surprised that being annoying is what brings that little bit of _Bucky_ back to his voice.

“I am, trust me, I _am,”_ Steve insists, “I’m just really glad you’re _here,_ Buck.”

“I didn’t know where else to go,” Bucky says, eyes falling onto the puppy instead of looking at Steve, “I just… I kept _remembering._ You and a- a cat? There was a cat, right? You tried to hide it from your ma but you were allergic?” The words come out rough. Like Bucky’s trying to pull them out of himself, and Steve’s reminded (though how can he _forget?_ ) that it wasn’t very long ago that Bucky looked at him and didn’t even _know_ him. 

“Yeah, pal, that’s right. You ended up taking the mangy thing home. Becca loved him,” Steve says and Bucky nods once, like Steve’s just confirmed something for him.

“He was an _asshole.”_ Bucky says suddenly and Steve’s so startled by it, by the feeling of being sent straight back to listening to Bucky bitch about _‘that damn cat’_ that he can’t do anything but laugh. “Well, he _was.”_

“He was,” Steve agrees amicably and then holds out the leftover towels from drying the dog, “You should get dry. I’ll go get you something to wear, and some blankets maybe? So you can sleep if you want. You been sleeping much? What about food? You hungry? I’m still a shit cook, but I’ve got some stuff already made. I swear SHIELD had a whole fleet of doctors dedicated to making sure I ate enough for my ‘enhanced metabolism’ and youtube’s got these videos on uh, meal prepping? So I’m learning. Kind of. They’ve got pretty much anything you want for delivery these days too.”

“ _Steve.”_ Bucky rescues Steve from himself and his rambling, taking the towels out of his hands. “Clothes, then food, then sleep,” Bucky says decisively and Steve practically _feels_ himself relax at having a _plan_ to follow.

A plan that he’s going to start _right now_ because Bucky is already stripping out of his clothes to dry off, apparently heedless of the fact that Steve is still there. Steve’s eyes track a bead of water that’s headed in a _very nice_ southernly direction before whipping around and retreating back to his bedroom to find clothes.

 

Less than a half hour later Bucky is dressed in Steve’s clothes, wrapped up in three different blankets, and demolishing two of Steve’s pre-prepped meals straight from the Tupperware containers.

The dog is sat beside him, eating out of a dish with plain chicken, rice, and peas- all things that Google said were safe for dogs.

Steve feels a little like a voyeur, but he can’t seem to make himself look away, even during something as ridiculous as Bucky eating like he’s suddenly turned into a vacuum cleaner.

When Bucky’s finished and has scraped one container free of pasta sauce and the other of what the nice lady on youtube had called a _soy ginger glaze,_ he stacks them together and places them on Steve’s coffee table with the now empty dish from the dog’s food on top.

“That was… That wasn’t terrible,” Bucky says, and Steve’s smile stretches too wide across his face.

“Right? Turns out I can make something halfway edible with some decent instructions,”

“Don’t get too big a head, Rogers. It’s still only halfway,” Bucky says around a yawn, visibly drooping like the food has sapped the adrenalin and anything else that was keeping him standing right out of him.

“Hey, I didn’t burn the kitchen down and it’s not gonna kill you, so I’d call that a massive improvement,” Steve says, feeling light and incandescent with Bucky in his home, Bucky on his _couch,_ Bucky’s voice warm and sleepy and teasing. “Get some sleep, Buck. I’ll burn you some pancakes when you wake up.”

 

When Steve wakes up from a restless sleep it’s to the sudden rush of _Bucky’s here, Bucky’s here, Bucky’s_ **_here._ **He wastes no time in rolling out of bed and skidding into his living room, desperate to make sure Bucky’s still there and hadn’t snuck out in the middle of the night.

Bucky’s right where he left him, curled up on his side under what amounts to almost every blanket in Steve’s house with a dog curled up behind his knees. Now that the dog is dry and still Steve can see that it’s actually kind of cute, even if it looks more marshmallow than dog.

It’s hard to focus on the dog, not when Bucky’s _there._ His hair’s a riot around his face, curling awkwardly and sticking up in a way that Steve thinks might go against some fundamental rules of physics. Further down Steve gets caught up on his eyelashes, the soft sweep of them and then below that his cheeks, his jaw still stupidly perfect in a way that makes Steve want to press his hand against it, his mouth lax in sleep.

He stays there like that, categorizing every little dimple, every bit of stubble, and every twitch for long enough that Bucky groans and stretches, fighting to get his arms out of the tangle of blankets without ever opening his eyes.

“If you’re gonna stare Rogers, you might as well come lay down.” His voice is sleep rough and familiar and Steve can’t find anything even close to approaching the will to deny himself this.

The couch isn’t meant for two people lying down, let alone two super soldiers, but Bucky shifts forward a little and Steve settles into the space left behind him. The dog groans and snorts when it’s spot is suddenly occupied by Steve’s knees, stretching and then flopping onto their feet.

 _‘Stay,’_ Steve thinks desperately, pressing his nose into the back of Bucky’s neck.

“You’re thinking too loud,” Bucky complains, taking Steve’s hand in his own, interlacing metal fingers with flesh. It feels a little like a test, one that Steve thinks he passes when he gives Bucky’s hand a squeeze and Bucky seems to relax all over, melting back into Steve a little more.

“I was just thinkin’, you could stick around a while. A dog needs a home, right? And I happen to have plenty of room here,” Steve says, curling his arm up until their tangled hands are pressed against Bucky’s chest.

“I’m not- You didn’t fix everything with your dumbass stubbornness and your ‘end of the line’ bullshit. I need to know you know that,” Bucky says, every bit of him seeming to tense up against Steve, “It hasn’t been that long, and hell, maybe time doesn’t really matter and all this bullshit is just how it’s always going to be, but I still wake up some days feeling like I’m a goddamn robot, and some days are like yesterday and I’m just stuck. Inbetween. And that shit, it’s not exactly easy to deal with Steve.”

Steve lets him speak, doesn’t interrupt even if he wants to, but the moment he’s finished he’s tugging at Bucky. “Turn around.”

“What?”

“You heard me, turn around.”

Bucky huffs, and Steve would bet money that he’s rolling his eyes, but he twists around to face Steve nonetheless.

“You said you remembered _enough_ ,” Steve says, ignoring Bucky’s confused frown for a moment, “Does _enough_ involve, uh, us?”

The confusion clears up on Bucky’s face, replaced by something fond that makes Steve want to squirm at least a little bit. “Yeah, Steve, I remember us.”

“Then you remember I love you,” Steve says, pressing his forehead into Bucky’s, “And that frankly, I don’t give a damn what version of you you’re gonna wake up as. I just want you here.”

“You’re such a sap Rogers, Jesus,” Bucky says, bumping his nose into Steve’s affectionately.

“Damn right I am,” Steve agrees, and then, “So that’s a yes to staying right?”

Bucky makes a considering noise, because he’s an _asshole,_ and then he nods, smoothing a hand over Steve’s jaw. “I guess. The dog needs a place, after all.”

“Oh yeah, it’s just for the dog.”

“Yep, definitely just for the dog. Not anything to do with you.”

Steve rolls his eyes at Bucky, and then, with a smile he can’t quite seem to get rid of, he kisses Bucky for the first time in 70 years.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Come chill with me on [Tumblr!](http://stevergrsno.tumblr.com/tagged/my-writing)


End file.
